Questioning for Formative Feedback: Meaningful Dialogue to Improve Learning

by Jackie Acree Walsh

Overview

When used effectively, quality questions and student dialogue result in self-regulated learners and formative feedback that reveals progress toward learning goals.

Learning knows no boundaries. The potential for learning exists whenever and wherever we interact with our environment. So how can we infuse school learning with the authenticity and excitement associated with real-life experiences?

In Questioning for Formative Feedback, Jackie Acree Walsh explores the relationship between questioning and feedback in K–12 classrooms and how dialogue serves as the bridge connecting the two.

Quality questioning, productive dialogue, and authentic use of feedback are a powerful trifecta for addressing the needs of a new generation of learners. In fact, the skillful use of these three processes can fuel and accelerate the academic, social, and emotional learning of all students.

In this book, Walsh provides a manual of practice for educators who want to engage students as partners in these processes. To that end, she offers the following features to help create a classroom in which everyone learns through intentional practice:

* Blueprints for coherent models of key processes and products.
* Tools and strategies to help you achieve identified outcomes.
* Protocols with step-by-step directions to complete an activity.
* Classroom artifacts of authentic classroom use, including links to 21 original videos produced exclusively for this book!

Working together, questioning, dialogue, and feedback can transform learning for all. This book supports you in embracing and bringing that vision to fruition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416631163
Publisher:	ASCD
Publication date:	05/20/2022
Pages:	203
Sales rank:	272,322
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jackie Acree Walsh, PhD, is a consultant and author who dedicates significant time to working with teachers and school leaders to embed quality questioning into their daily practice. To this end, she has facilitated professional learning across the United States, authored seven books and multiple articles on the topic, and made frequent presentations at professional conferences. Walsh began her career as a high school social studies teacher and has worked and taught at all levels of education. Her passion is partnering with educators to improve learning for all students. A lifelong learner, she is an avid reader, traveler, and conversationalist. She is also a sports enthusiast with a special interest in teams representing her alma maters, Duke University and the University of Alabama.

Table of Contents

Foreword Susan M. Brookhart xi

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction 1

Part I Framing the Processes 13

1 Feedback That Fuels Learning 15

2 Questioning That Generates Dialogue and Feedback 36

Part II Developing Student Capacity 61

3 Teacher Beliefs, Roles, and Responsibilities in the Formative Classroom 63

4 Skills and Dispositions That Empower Learners 86

Part III Designing Formative Experiences 105

5 Quality Questions: Generators of Formative Feedback 107

6 Response Structures: Channels for Optimizing Responses from All 138

Part IV Advancing Engagement and Learning 173

7 Dialogic Feedback: A Transformative Process 175

Appendix: Classroom Videos 185

References 191

Index 195

About the Author 200

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Imagine being in lessons dominated by questions that require less than three-word responses. Imagine spending the day in a class and no one listens to you. Imagine receiving feedback that proves you were not understood. Not in Jackie Walsh's class—where questions cause thinking, give feedback to the teacher about their impact, lead to wonder, elicit student thinking, initiate and sustain feedback conversations, and help determine next steps in teaching and learning. Questions start—not finish—dialogue, engage (not exclude), lead to uptake, and are invitations to maintain learning. This is the essence of Questioning for Formative Feedback.
—John Hattie, Emeritus laureate professor, Melbourne Graduate School of Education; Chair, Board of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership

Walsh is a master of the art of questioning. In this new book, she raises the bar even higher by linking quality questions to the thinking, dialogue, and feedback that can result in learning. Importantly, she ensures that questioning for formative assessment is informative. The strength of this book lies in its links between principles and practice. I can't wait to apply these ideas to my own practices.
—Nancy Frey, San Diego State University, Department of Educational Leadership

Leave it to Jackie Walsh, leading expert in the principles and practices of quality questioning, to frame her latest work, Questioning for Formative Feedback, with a powerful question: How can we harness three powerful processes—formative feedback, quality questioning, and purposeful dialogue—to optimize student learning? Grounded in decades of research and practice, Walsh has uncovered the synergy among these three potent accelerators of student achievement, motivation, and engagement and provided us with a practical guide for realizing their promise in the classroom. Although I've been a student of formative assessment for many years, I will never again be able to think of it as separate from student inquiry, agency, and discourse. Walsh's fresh perspective has left me both inspired by a vision of classrooms alive with authenticity and excitement and eager to put her practical tools to work.
—Nancy Love, Senior consultant, Research for Better Teaching; author of The Data Coach's Guide for Improving Learning for All Students

Dr. Walsh has done it again. Questioning for Formative Feedback will be our go-to resource for using quality questions for formative feedback. I believe that grading is fading into feedback, and our teachers need the tools and resources to make this happen in our classrooms with our students. To put it simply, Dr. Walsh offers practical tools and ideas that work. At Oxford High School, we saw growth in our ACT data during a pandemic. This was no accident. Our work with Dr. Walsh and our commitment to quality questioning is the reason we were able to achieve this success. I highly recommend this book to all educators who are committed to partnering with their students to enhance classroom dialogue, formative feedback, and student learning.
—Heath M. Harmon, Principal, Oxford High School, Oxford, Alabama

I have been a believer in the power of quality questioning since my introduction to it several years ago. As an instructional leader on an elementary campus, I know that time is of the essence and with so many competing interests in the classroom, the use of questioning and an expectation of authentic student engagement in thinking is the essential tool to achieve high levels of learning for all. This book seeks to propel us forward from the antiquated notion that numerical grades are feedback on student learning to a space where teachers are designers of rich learning experiences that inspire students to seek true feedback for their own learning and define their next steps.
—Deanna Dolford Jackson, Principal, Watts Elementary School, Cibolo, TX

While most educators agree that giving students a voice in their own education and designing learning with the students in mind are sound and meaningful practices, many educators struggle to bring this approach to fruition. Understanding the importance of quality questioning, purposeful dialogue, and formative feedback is important; being able to transfer this understanding into classrooms with students is a critical challenge for educators. Dr. Walsh provides an easy-to-understand, familiar GPS voice to help us make this transfer of principles into actual daily classroom practice. This book builds on a lifetime of work and is truly a manual for educators looking to increase student achievement for today's generation of learners. Not only does Dr. Walsh provide a step-by-step approach for applying the research and learning behind quality questioning, purposeful dialogue, and formative feedback, but she also addresses the importance of meshing these practices with social and emotional needs in order to help students be curious, motivated, self-regulated learners—something we all should work for in our classrooms each day.
—Stoney M. Beavers, Assistant director, Alabama Best Practices Center

Jackie Walsh's Questioning for Formative Feedback is a must read for everyone involved in teacher preparation. Her book provides a framework for understanding questioning, dialogue, and formative feedback for emerging candidates through career educators. The blueprints, tools, protocols, and artifacts included in the book provide approaches that are important for preservice candidates' ability to understand the value of questioning for students and teachers. She provides examples that allow preservice candidates to see roles and responsibilities for all involved in the classroom community engaged in effective questioning practices.
—Karen Granger, Assistant professor, UNC Pembroke Regional director, NC New Teacher Support Program

The essential question Jackie Walsh has pursued throughout her influential career is succinctly stated in her introduction to this essential new book: How can we infuse school learning with the authenticity and excitement associated with real-life experiences? Her answers—offered in clear, practical, actionable language honed in a series of influential works over several decades—come down to this: The strategic use of quality questioning, purposeful dialogue, and formative feedback. Readers of this succinct, illuminating guide to formative practice will learn how to become strategic users of these powerful tools. Today's teachers are hungry to help students gain ownership of learning. Here's how.
—John Croft Norton, Founder and coeditor, MiddleWeb.com

What an incredible gift Jackie Walsh has given to preservice teachers with her new text, Questioning for Formative Feedback. Through careful explanations of questioning, formative feedback, and dialogue—along with extensive classroom artifacts, videos, and questioning protocols—Dr. Walsh supports new teachers with a firm foundation of being both a lesson designer and learning facilitator in any subject area. Lifting student achievement is paramount in our post-pandemic efforts. This text serves as a blueprint for young teachers who are learning to craft supportive, solid structures in their teaching environments while working to increase student achievement. As a former district administrator, I believe veteran teachers who study and implement this text will refine their current practices of questioning and feedback and ultimately, increase their capacity to affect student learning. Questioning and formative feedback cause students to think more deeply about the work they are doing and move them toward better learning outcomes. Additionally, as higher-education instructors work to support student interns, the questioning protocols and formative feedback routines Dr. Walsh provides in the text will support them as reflection experiences will be strengthened. I am ready to place this text in the hands of both new and veteran teachers as well as higher-education faculty. It will be exciting to watch the positive impact this text guarantees as teachers employ great questioning, offer formative feedback, and create frequent dialogue around any topic.
—Paige Raney, Chair, Division of Education, Spring Hill College, Mobile, Alabama

Jackie Walsh's masterful ability to harness the power of quality questioning and its use in K–12 classrooms is on full display in Questioning for Formative Feedback. She demonstrates how the notion of good, thoughtful questioning can allow student-teacher interaction to flow from thinking to dialogue to feedback, raising student learning to high levels. Through real-life scenarios and useful protocols, classroom leaders will find support for developing and designing formative frameworks for student experiences throughout this amazing book. It is a must for teachers focusing on high levels of learning for all students.
—Bill Kennedy, Director (retired), Principal Leadership Academy Hamilton County (TN) Schools/Public Education Foundation, Chattanooga, Tennessee

As a teacher, I know how challenging and important cognitive engagement is to student learning. Questioning for Formative Feedback offers practitioners with a much-needed resource to develop student ownership for their thinking and learning. In this book, Jackie Walsh balances theory with practice, providing the reader with a sound rationale for intentional use of quality questioning and dialogue to produce feedback that unlocks student learning. More importantly, she illustrates practical ways for teachers to make these connections for themselves and their students. The tools provided in charts and graphical format will be of immeasurable use to me and all teachers who read this book.
—Brad R. Waguespack, Environmental science teacher, Vestavia Hills High School, Vestavia Hills, Alabama